Scholary Journals and Newspapers in the Age of Enlightenment - Project details (GJZ18)

Scholary Journals and Newspapers as Network of Knowledge in the Age of Enlightenment

www.gelehrte-journale.de/en/

Scholarly journals and newspapers cannot only be regarded as the 'medium of the Enlightenment' (Paul Raabe, 1974), but as the 'most important bearers of the Enlightenment' they made the 18th century almost a 'century of the journal' (Werner Faulstich, 2002). As review organs in particular, the periodicals offered an opportunity to maintain an overview of individual branches of science in view of the tremendous flood of scientific publications.

However, the claim of the review periodicals was not exhausted with the announcement or review of specialist literature; Christian Gottlob Heyne (1729-1812), editor of the 'Göttingische Anzeigen von gelehrten Sachen', stated in the year 1784: 'Scholarly newspapers considered merely as reviews have a very limited face. No, they must achieve more; one should be able to judge from them the rise and fall, the progress of the knowledge, insights and studies of a country and people.' In this sense the scholars contained journals and newspapers not only reviews and book announcements, but also essays, reports on scientific discoveries and projects or personal news, thus reflecting almost the entire exchange of knowledge and culture of their time.

The project 'Scholary Journals and Newspapers in the Age of Enlightenment' of the Göttingen Academy of Sciences and Humanities in Lower Saxony provides access to a total of 128 German-language representatives of the interdisciplinary polyhistoric journals and thus makes the emergence and structures of the enlightened knowledge society visible. Within the framework of the project, approximately 1,275 volumes with approximately 850,000 pages will be processed; the resulting data records will also be merged with the data of the predecessor projects ('Index of German-language Periodicals' (IdZ) and 'Systematic Index of German-language Review Journals' (IdRZ 18)) in a database. This provides access to the content of 323 journals (nearly 2,800 volumes with about 1,200,000 pages).

The long-term project of the Göttingen Academy of Sciences and Humanities in Lower Saxony is carried out in cooperation with the Göttingen State and Universtity Library, the Leipzig University Library and the Bayerische Staatsbibliothek München; the libraries also coordinate the digitisation of the journals to be processed, taking into account the results of the VD18 project, which enables direct access to the respective reviews or book advertisements from the database.

Lead/Coordination

Affiliates

Project board at the SUB Göttingen

Project staff at the SUB Göttingen

SUB Göttingen departments / units involved in the project

Former project staff of the SUB Göttingen

Marcus Hellmann